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Technology Stocks : Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: PMG who wrote (109767)	10/7/2000 6:04:51 PM
From: PMG	Respond to of 164684

One reason for me to be bullish on AMZN. Blame me but remember... market risk ... yes! But what we have a company here is impossible to duplicate... ----------------------------------------------- Bezos with Hooters Satire October 07, 2000 12:00 AM PT From the November 2000 issue of UPSIDE magazine This time, Jeff Bezos has gone too far. Desperate to turn around his current image as a hopelessly optimistic, boring dotcom guy doomed to fail in the end, Bezos has decided his bookstore startup, Amazon.com (AMZN), needs a little sex appeal. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It is amazing what a little sex appeal can do for one's business acumen. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- So, Time magazine's now embarrassing pick for "Man of the Year" has hooked up his company and his reputation to the Hooters restaurant chain. Explaining this business move on a recent episode of "The Oprah Winfrey Show," Bezos said, "Some people were saying that I'm getting to be predictable, you know. First we can't make money selling books, so we add CDs, and when that doesn't work, we add household goods, and etc., but this time I've fooled the world!" The original Amazon press release that went out, complete with photos of Jeff and two Hooters representatives, seemed so outrageous that most news organizations thought it was a hoax. The Amazon publicity department was flooded with calls from reporters around the world wanting to verify the news. Trading of Amazon stock was halted. Over the next 24 hours, Jeff was on virtually every news program worldwide. The publicity photo, which reporters dubbed "Bezos with Hooters," was on the cover of every newspaper and news magazine. And of course, the tabloids went nuts. A CBS instant poll was taken, and Bezos was voted the most recognizable person on the planet Earth, way ahead of Prince Charles and Madonna. Hooters to the rescue. It turns out the alliance with Hooters has a business model that might actually work to bring profitability to his company. That's right, Hooters could very well be Amazon's salvation! Jeff isn't trying to get into the food delivery business, nor is he trying to spice up his boring website with Hooters girls. What he is doing is creating a gigantic Amazon.Hooters.com sports betting pool that leverages nicely off the football pool that is already part of the Hooters success story. And indeed, on the day it was launched, the Amazon.Hooters.com sports pool was instantly the largest sports betting pool in the history of humankind. Safely located on an offshore oil-drilling platform, the joint venture is out of reach of regulation by state or national governments. The structure is such that Amazon. Hooters.com is a separate organization from either company, and all that Hooters and Amazon have agreed to do is publicize the existence of the venture -- Amazon doesn't even link to it.The result is that the venture is generating more than $1 billion in cash flow daily. All the money put into the pool goes to winners of the pool, none to the house, but the house makes tons of profit just on the float. This is sheer financial genius. Bezos gets to prove once and for all that he truly is a wild and crazy guy, and it gives him access to nearly unlimited funding for Amazon. Call it a comeback. Amazon, which since last April has been ripped to shreds by virtually every business news organization, been downgraded by hoards of analysts, seen its stock drop by 500 percent, and been made into the laughingstock of the dotcom world, is about to go on a roll again. I predict that within the next few days, Henry Blodget will rate the stock a "strong buy" and set the price target back at $400, and this time it will stick! It is amazing what a little sex appeal can do for one's business acumen. Of course, this could all backfire if the majority of Amazon's female customers switch to Yahoo (YHOO). But even then Jeff will have the resources to weather the storm and eventually replace all the departing feminists with beer-bellied, sports-betting men, thereby completely transforming Amazon. There are whispers in the hallway that Jeff is thinking deep thoughts about Playboy magazine and stock car racing. Considering the up-and-down year he is having, it would be kind of nice to see him successful at something. Maybe he will be the first person to be voted Time's "Man of the Year" twice. Editor's disclaimer: David Bunnell has an uncanny ability to write the news before it happens. Nothing in the above piece is true, except in his mind. David Bunnell is editor and CEO of UPSIDE